Folger stages birthday party for English Bard

The big, low-to-the-ground, almost bone-white building that takes up all of one side of a block at 201 East Capitol St. looks stolid and not all that inviting. But move in a little closer. See on the north facade nine bas-reliefs depicting scenes from Shakespeare’s plays. In the garden see the craggy statues evoking eight of the Bard’s unforgettable characters. On the west side see the impish Puck, the mischief maker of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

No doubt about it: This is the Folger Shakespeare Library, Henry Clay Folger and his devoted wife Emily’s gift to Washington and the country. It’s 75 years old this year, and on Sunday will be the scene of a blowout 443rd birthday party for Will himself that organizers expect will draw 2,500 to 3,000 visitors to explore the solid building and join in Elizabethan-style revelry.

Begun in 1979, the annual Shakespeare’s Birthday Open House is a four-hour occasion: for plays and playing, lessons in stage combat, candle making, jesters and jests and old-style singing and dancing. The maids are merry, the fools both professional and amateur, and the cake by tradition is cut by Queen Elizabeth — a mock Elizabeth I, that is.

Even the reading rooms of the library are thrown open, a once-a-year event that lets everyone visit the brown-hued, stained-glassed, book-rich rooms usually reserved for readers and researchers.

And as it does every year, the celebration will climax at 3 p.m. with the traditional procession from inside the building to the grounds, headed by Queen Bess.

“I think the celebration shows just how modern Shakespeare really is,” says Grace Schiraldi, a Folger docent who is the party’s principal organizer, “and how enduring his works are for everyone.”

The passion for Shakespeare

The Folgers might have been a little startled by all these noises and alarums, but in fact the party has become a kind of annual testament to the library’s status.

Since it opened in 1932 it has become not just a full-service Shakespeare and Elizabethan and European Renaissance library and research institution, but more — a national and city treasure, a place full of vibrant activities and public programs that have exploded over the last three decades.

Certainly the library has been at the root of the passion for Shakespeare that has overtaken America and Washington, to the point where the Bard has become a cultural cottage industry.

Consider the current, six-month-long “Shakespeare in Washington” festival, a cornucopia of plays, exhibitions, performances and special events celebrating the Bard. For it, the Folger showcased the Classic Theatre of Harlem’s production of “King Lear,” will produce its own “The Tempest,” opening in May, and has mounted a major exhibition, “Shakespeare in American Life,” now on show.

Consider the films and TV shows on Shakespeare and his times that feed the popular imagination — Helen Mirren as “Elizabeth” on HBO, “The Tudors” on Showtime and the Oscar-winning “Shakespeare in Love.”

“I think the Folgers would marvel at where we are today — but I also think that much of what has happened over the years are all things that they would be proud of,” says Gail Kerner Paster, who took over as director of the Folger Shakespeare Library five years ago.

“He intended very much for the Folger to be a living institution that was used and visited by Americans and inhabited by the spirit of Shakespeare,” Ms. Paster says of Henry Clay Folger.

“There was a reason, I think, that he insisted that the Folger be here, and not somewhere else. To Folger, this was the heart and soul of America.”

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